Firearms such as rifles normally include a relatively elongated barrel encapsulated by a hand guard. The hand guard generally protects the user from the heat of the barrel during operation since, during operation, a user must grip some forward portion of the firearm to provide lateral and vertical control. The amount of control afforded by gripping the hand guard, however, is limited by the anatomic orientation of the human hand. The human hand, being better suited to grasp objects in a vertical orientation, when grasping the hand guard must do so in a horizontal orientation. This horizontally-oriented configuration can limit the user's ability to control the firearm. Consequently, conventional vertical fore grips have been developed to attach to firearms so that the user's control of the firearm can be improved.
One conventional vertical fore grip is a vertical grip designed to attach to the forward section of a firearm for grasping by the user's forward hand. When compared to conventional hand guards, a conventional vertical fore grip can enable a user to steady a firearm during operation and to resist recoil by providing a firmer grasping point. At the same time, conventional vertical fore grips can increase the amount of space available on the firearm since, in attaching to the forward portion of the firearm, the vertical fore grip can occupy less surface area than when compared to the human hand. Thus, by increasing the amount of available space on the firearm to the user, conventional vertical fore grips can enable a user to attach multiple accessories to a firearm in the remaining space and allows the user to adapt the firearm to operational requirements.
While conventional vertical fore grips have provided users with the ability to customize their firearms to their operational needs, they have generally not provided users with the ability to customize their firearms to themselves. When the user is a member of the military, police, or a private security organization, this can be a significant problem as firearms are not owned or operated by a single user, but may be randomly issued to many different users prior to a mission or training exercise. In such organizations, any individual user's physical features—such as height, arm length, hand size, and dexterity—can vary widely between users. In addition to these physical differences, individual users often have personal preferences for configuring their firearm to fit their own definition of comfort and needs. Conventional fore grips, however, provide little to no ability for users to adapt a firearm in these ways.